Yesterday I spent the morning helping cut logs for the woodburner. The journey took me up through Inverurie to Oldmeldrum. This is the view of Bennachie from the road. It isn't all that high but it still dominates Aberdeenshire and is a loved landmark.

I spent some time recently pondering the psalms, including Psalm 121. The Scottish Paraphrase remains for me a devotional standard:

The paraphrase translates the first stanza as a Question and answer rather than a statement. I confess that's how I have always read it. When it all gets too much, and it's hard to see the way ahead, or our attention is so focused on the here and the now with all its demands and uncertainties, then that question is both urgent and apt. Lifting the eyes above our limited horizons and the remorseless present, the outline of a mountain forces the attention upwards, and the question "From whence doth come mine aid", is both existentially unavoidable and personally directed to God. For people of faith, the connection between the hill line, prayer and personal circumstances is only completed by that second couplet. "My safety cometh from the Lord, who heaven and earth hath made".

Bennachie in the winter looks bleak and yet when the sun hits the snow it's also a familiar and reassuring landmark. In the days before digital cameras I was coming home from Pluscarden Abbey and passing Bennachie in a winter twilight. Flying across the skyline, against a rose and peach sky fringed with purple, a long skein of geese in chevron formation. That was another mystical ornithological moment when God seemed near, beauty laid my heart open, and prayer was in the compelling urge to stop the car and look – which I did. And perhaps such moments are best left unconstrained by digital technology. The theatre of God's glory remains a sellout of splendour and spectacle. That's why eyes lifted to the hills ask a question that most times is rhetorical, and has the expected answer, "My safety cometh from the Lord, who heaven and earth hast made."

It was those lines that were in mind while doing one of the panels of the Shalom tapestry a few weeks ago. The tapestry is now at the framers, and consists of five panels. One each on Psalm 1,8,23,104, 121. The one below is 121 and is done entirely freehand as a visual impression of a psalm that is now embedded in my spirituality. Once the completed and framed work is back I'll post a photo of it.

"I could live on £53 a week if I had to."

No sir, you could not – nor should you be expected to.

But the desperation that makes you claim such a ridiculous improbability is part of the visual impairment of a Government lacking ears to hear, eyes to see, experience to understand and a heart to feel the rich possibilities of the people who make up our communities.

When it comes to U turns, the transformation from weeping compassion in 2002 Easterhouse, and the body swerve given to the exhortation you preached at a fringe labour meeting in 2006 to aim at a level of income that supported and helped the poorest, requires a sufficient causal explanation for an effect that is gratuitously callous.

Bob Holman is one of my heroes; he along with Kay Carmichael taught me Social Administration at Glasgow Uni in the 1970's. I learned from him the meaning of the word poor. Coming from the family of a dairyman on the farms, though never thinking of myself as poor even if we were, I heard someone explain how the real world works, and how it can be made to work in different ways depending on the choices made by Governments and the powerful. You, IDS, met Bob Holman and took time to see, listen and respond to people in Easterhouse, many of them on benefits, who shatter stereotypes such as undeserving poor, work-shy, benefit fraud and various other bogey words used to justify current policies.

Last June Bob wrote in the Guardian a piece that now seems like a Micah type prophecy. Or maybe Amos who talked about grinding the faces of the poor in the dust and selling them for the price of a pair of slippers.  By the way, I suspect the slippers worn in your home may have cost the best part of a week's survival money for those on £53 a week.You can read Bob's considered outrage here

So now IDS, you are back to stereotypes, scapegoats and soft targets for the populist right. And the demonstrable foolishness, hard to hide cynicism, or otherworldly ignorance exposed by the claim you could live on £53 per week, further diminishes the integrity let alone residual integrity of a coalition brokered on the self-interest of the parties. And I'm sorry to say, based on the arrogant naivete of those who say they know, when in fact they cannot possibly know what it's like to live on benefits.

And as for the claim that the changes will make the benefot system fairer – I am not at all persuaded the word fair is the same as the word just, right and humane. It seems to me a playground word, used by those who think others are being treated unfairly generously. I'm more concerned about those treated unfairly callously.

I recognise but cannotd apologise for the political partisanship of what I've written. I follow One who preached good news to the poor, and worship a God who requires that we act justly, love mercy and walk humbly, and live for the coming of a Kingdom of justice and joy and righteousness.

Like many other people I have no trouble speaking, and a great deal of trouble listening. Few human characteristics serve the ego more faithfully than our ability to speak, to talk, to occupy the space between others and us with out noise, our agendas, our thoughts, and if we are honest, often with our emotional needs. One of the writers who helps me to perceive my need of words, talk, speech, that all too seductive facility with words as conduits of thought, and as vocal chess pieces outflanking the other, is Jean Vanier.

I have no hesitation in counting Vanier one of the most remarkable Christian leaders of the past half century. His book Community and Growth is a textbook on courtesy, compassion and presence to the other beyond myself. Courtesy is much more than good manners though it is that – it is respect for the other, communicated by service, deference and a readiness to listen. Compassion is more than emotional feelings of kindness – it is a spirit of welcome, love and acceptance of the other in their need, not as the need meeter, but as one who feels with them, accompanies them and values them for who they are. Presence is precisely what is not given if all we offer are words. Presence is most deeply felt either in silence shared, or in attentiveness to what the other says and who the other is, for it is that attentiveness, such paying of loving attention, that conveys the value and the significance of this other person, in whose presence I am.

Jean Vanier is someone whose presence is unignorable – tall, distinguished, stooped, a face now wrinkled and set in a combination of smiling and thoughtfulness (at least as photographed on the front of the book above. Yet this powerful man, charismatic and accomplished, moves amongst many of the most vulnerable people in our world, and does so with unselfconscious humility, meekness of spirit and a contagious wonder at the miracle and beauty of each human being. In this book of letters he often talks about his own spiritual hopes and disappointments, deeply self-aware and therefore neither exaggerating his guilt nor understating his achievements. His spirit and the spirit he seeks to teach and embody is glimpsed in a couple of sentences as he tells of his inner thoughts while being interviewed for Moscow TV in 1989, at the height of perestroika and glasnost:

"I spoke mainly  of the need for love in each human being, especially in the poorest. I spoke of love which is stronger than hatred, and trust which is stronger than fear. Throughout the interview I tried  to remain in the presence  of God, in order to speak from the depths of my heart, from that place where Jesus lives within me, and thus to speak words from God."

It takes a saint to speak with such innocence of his nearness to God, and for me, Jean Vanier is simply that. An entire pastoral theology of speech and silence could be woven from such comments in this book of letters. A lot of them are more interesting for those interested in the history of L'Arche and the developments of communities for vulnerable people across the world. But in most of them there is wisdom, spiritual reflection, and a humane devotion to others that is so counter-cultural in recession ridden culture, that the values and convictions Vanier espouses and embodies become a powerful witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

These selected verses from Ecclesiasticus are amongst my favourite Wisdom texts. They capture exactly for me the importance of good work, diligent and conscientious attention, skill harnessed to creative purpose, and human activity that helps maintain the fabric of the world. The labourers and artisans mentioned here are not politicians, lawyers, academics, consultants, CEO's, movers and shakers – if anything, they are the ones who make sure that life goes on, things are done, necessities are made, and that this activity is every bit as important as professional, financial, and management in the building of community and the provision of what is essential in human life. The passage is really saying that these are people who let their hands do their talking – leaving the talking to those who have time for it!

The photo of Paisley Abbey was taken from the steps of the Town Hall, in  a hurry, during the interval at a concert on a summer evening. There wasn't time to outflank the lamp post or move the parked cars – so it looks like what it is, an 850 year old place of worship plonked right in the middle of the town. It too shows the skill and work of those who maintain the fabric of the world.

Maintaining
the Fabric of the World

The wisdom of the scribe comes by opportunity of leisure;  And he that has little business shall become
wise.

How shall he become wise that holds the plough, That glorieth in
the shaft of the goad, That driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, And
whose discourse is of the stock of bulls? He will set his heart upon turning
his furrows; And his wakefulness is to give his heifers their fodder.

So is every artificer and workmaster, That passeth his time by night
as by day; They that cut gravings of signets, And his diligence is to make
great variety; He will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture,
And will be wakeful to finish his work.

 So is the smith sitting by the anvil,
And considering the unwrought iron:

The vapor of the fire will waste his flesh; And in the heat of the
furnace will he wrestle with his work: The noise of the hammer will be ever in
his ear, And his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; He will set his heart
upon perfecting his works, And he will be wakeful to adorn them perfectly.

So is the potter sitting at his work, And turning the wheel about
with his feet, Who is always anxiously set at his work, And all his handywork
is by number;  He will fashion the clay with his arm, And
will bend its strength in front of his feet; He will apply his heart to finish
the glazing; And he will be wakeful to make clean the furnace.

All these put their trust in their hands; And each becometh wise in
his own work. Without these shall not a city be inhabited, And men shall not
sojourn nor walk up and down therein. They shall not be sought for in the
council of the people, And in the assembly they shall not mount on high; They
shall not sit on the seat of the judge, And they shall not understand the
covenant of judgement: Neither shall they declare instruction and judgement;

But they will maintain the fabric of the world; And in the
handywork of their craft is their prayer.

Ecclesiasticus 38.